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We have now no longer any difficulty in understanding the different actions of aliments, poisons, and remedial agents we have a clear conception of the causes of hunger, of the exact nature of death; and we are not, as formerly, obliged to content ourselves with a mere description of their symptoms.
If poisons are mixed with articles of food or medicine by the negroes with any noticeable frequency, the sign of a negro compounding medicines for public sale would surely be, to customers, the most detersive sign which an apothecary could erect over his premises.
They contained colorless, volatile essences, of the nature of which I shall only say that they were not poisons, phosphor and ammonia entered into some of them. There were also some very curious glass tubes, and a small pointed rod of iron, with a large lump of rock-crystal, and another of amber, also a loadstone of great power.
An actor cruel and vicious enough to strike down two people as Miss Lamar and Werner were stricken, of sufficient dramatic make-up to conceive of the manner of their deaths, would want to see them writhe and suffer. He would select poisons equally rare and effective, but those more slow and painful in their operation. No, Walter, Shirley is not indicated by this method of reasoning.
Experience has shown that just as there are certain poisons which the bodily functions are unable to resist, so there are certain drugs which have the effect of sapping the will and distorting the judgment. The craving which they leave in their wake may very easily become so compelling that human nature cannot resist it.
Poisons had been sent to her by a young nobleman, Tommaso Samminiati, that she might dispose of a certain Sister Calidonia, who had become repentant and was threatening to reveal the secrets of their life; and the poisons were so deadly, so the letter ran, that when once Calidonia had swallowed a certain white powder, "if the devil does not help her, she will pass from this life in half a night's time, and without the slightest sign of violence."
The wourali and other poisons mentioned by Humboldt have, since the publication of this work, been carefully analysed by the first chemists of Europe, and experiments made on their symptoms and supposed remedies. I had myself no direct and sufficiently convincing proof of the action of this specific; and the experiments of Delille and Majendie rather tend to disprove its efficacy.
"'I am satisfied, said Dr. van Heerden, 'that the man already contemplated the deed, and when I voiced my suspicions in the palm-court he decided upon the action. The presence in his pocket of cyanide one of the deadliest and quickest of poisons suggests that he had the project in his mind. I did not see his action or, of course, I should have stopped him!"
The leading symptom is tetanic spasm. 5. =Poisons Affecting the Heart.= These kill by sudden shock, syncope, or collapse. They comprise prussic acid, dilute solution of oxalic acid and oxalates, aconite, digitalis, strophanthus, convallaria, and tobacco. 6. =Poisons Acting on the Lungs.= These have for their type carbonic acid gas and coal gas.
Its vices cannot compare for a moment in this respect with the monstrous tragedies and almost suffocating secrecies and villainies of the Court of James I. But the dram-drinking and nose-slitting of the saturnalia of Charles II. seem at once more human and more detestable than the passions and poisons of the Renaissance, much in the same way that a monkey appears inevitably more human and more detestable than a tiger.
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